Ode to the Old School—Tableside Caesar

With Larry van Aalst, Caesar veteran.

Shouting out the campiest, ceremony-iest, pain-in-the-can-unless-you’re-watching-it-iest mainstays of old-school food and drink service—every week. This edition: the mighty Caesar.

Full disclosure: Larry
van Aalst was the one who made me my first tableside Caesar.

It
was always done in exactly the same way, every time we came back to the
restaurant, with all the bravado of a magic trick. He worked with my mother in
her bartending days, so we always had the inside track on the staff (extra cherries
in the Shirley Temples from Claire at the bar). Even though we knew we had actually
ordered the salad, having him ceremoniously squeeze lemons and mince garlic for
us always felt like an off-menu surprise—a treat for only the highest of
rollers that made other diners crane their necks to watch our table. He never
flinched when we stood on the banquette to watch the flurry of his hands in
motion. I loved seeing the tell-tale cart cruise towards us, maneuvering
around the dining room like a heat-seeking missile stacked high with romaine, a
tall wooden pepper grinder standing at attention.

French tableside service
was nothing new to van Aalst when he helped to open Equus Restaurant at the
Fountaingrove Inn in 1986, on a wide corner of an intersection in Santa Rosa,
California. He’d first learned it 10 years prior, at various spots in the Bay
Area. He didn’t move around as much as people tend to in this industry, which
meant that during his 25 years at Equus, he became the one coaching waiters to
pick up dimes and un-popped kernels of popcorn in silver service training. He
was also the sommelier, and for a little while, lived on the other side of the
swimming pool in our condo complex, where he had a whole wall made of corks. His
team at Equus did it all: Bananas Foster, Cherries Jubilee, the works.

His Caesars, though.
To this day, whenever a reunion takes place, all anyone wants to talk about is that
damn salad, because he was—and is, even post-retirement—THE guy.
There’s something about standing in front of
others and taking charge of the situation that is satisfying to a degree in any
job. You don’t get to do that behind the perfume counter at Macy’s. There are
very few situations in which people will sit and watch and listen to what you’re
doing, so it is definitely a little bit of an ego boost to have people listen
to you and appreciate you. So whatever personality it is that demands that sort
of satisfaction is drawn to it. Remember Jean-Marie? That goofy French guy that
worked down here? He’d get so dramatic with flambés and all that that he’d burn
his eyebrows off. Everybody would yell, and he’d whoop and have a good time. It
was definitely a performance art. It wasn’t just feeding people. It’s still
popular, but the transient nature of this business means that people don’t get
the same training that we did. I would try to never say the same lines, none
of the “Hi, I’m Larry, I’ll be with you tonight,” stuff. I tried to be as
personal and spontaneous as I could be. And as unobtrusive. You do your
entertainment, but you have to read people, and see what they want from you. That’s
part of the artistry of a waiter’s position. The creation myth of
Caesar salad usually goes something like this: Caesar Cardini, an Italian
immigrant turned restaurateur created the salad in 1924 after a Fourth of July
push depleted the kitchen larder. Improvising, he threw together whatever he
had left, and added a little flair—concocting it tableside. Everyone else says
they had already invented the thing, that it was called “Aviator’s salad,” but
hey, it’s pretty clear who came out on top. Julia Child famously recalled
having it at his restaurant, even if the first major mention of the creation didn’t
show up until 1946, in Pennsylvania’s News
Herald. The big food rage in Hollywood, Dorothy Kilgallen writes, is an “intricate
concoction that takes ages to prepare and contains (zowie!) lots of garlic, raw
or slightly coddled eggs, croutons, romaine, anchovies, parmeasan [sic]
cheese, olive oil, vinegar and plenty of black pepper.”

Close, but here’s how
van Aalst did it:
While you’re doing it, you have to be in the
now. That’s definitely one of the secrets: you cannot multitask. The way you start is with a clean wooden bowl.
You put a little salt in the bowl, maybe half a teaspoon. Chop up one clove of
garlic, and you do that by sticking a fork in the garlic and then using a sharp
knife to create a kind of mincer. Chop it up really quickly, and then you take
the fork and mash it a little bit in the bottom of the bowl. With a large,
heavy spoon, you draw the garlic across the side of the bowl, and eventually the
garlic will turn into a purée. That stays on the side of the bowl, so that the leaves
pick up a little bit of the flavor when they’re tossed. Then you do the same
with anchovy, and you can do one filet of anchovy for each person at the table.
The next step is to crack an egg—the whole
egg—into the bottom of the bowl, and then directly on top of that, squeeze a
lemon. You stick a little cheesecloth on it and put a fork in it to squeeze the
lemon. The recipe we used had a little bit of Worcestershire sauce, about a
tablespoon, and we also put a little A1 steak sauce* in it. On top of that, you
put one part red wine vinegar, which turns out to be maybe two tablespoons, and
then four parts olive oil. Mix that in the bottom of the bowl. When that’s
thoroughly mixed, you add the torn hearts of romaine, and freshly grated
Parmesan cheese, and as much fresh ground pepper as you think is going to be
appreciated by the guest. And that’s all there is. It’s a simple salad, and it
should be done relatively quickly.

The trick to any
aspect of French service, he notes, is muscle memory—learning how to use your
hands correctly, mostly. The Caesar was no different; mincing the garlic and
anchovy to the right consistency was tricky for people, as were the proportions.
There was always a
leaf or two left in the bowl for sampling. Every single salad made was analyzed
and tweaked, thus kept on track.
You have to put some energy into it when you’re
making the salad and not be too glib. Obviously kids will want to get up and
look in the bowl as you’re doing it, things like that. People who are good at
it are the people who enjoy making it and eating it. Oftentimes, we’d make
Caesar salads at the end of the night just because we liked ‘em and wanted it
for dinner ourselves. Trends change, and what we expect changes
dramatically. But if you get someone who knows something about Caesar salad, it
might be one of the best dishes in the house. I think the faster you go, the
better it turns out. One of the things that does is it gives you the impetus to
put enthusiasm into it. When you’re doing the garlic and the anchovy and going
fast, you’re more dramatic. And you can’t take five minutes out of your
service. You have to make it in 90 seconds, otherwise you’ve lost a lot of
other races while you’re trying to finish that one. I was real
quick.I made close to 40,000 Caesar salads at that restaurant. I worked 260 days a year, for 25 years. If you do ten a day,
and sometimes I’d do more…you see how the numbers go. By his count, people don't get really good until they hit 10,000.

*Pro-tip: A1 has a lot
of depth, (and UMAMI as the cool kids say) and lends a just a hint
of smoke to the dressing. It’s barely noticeable, except when it’s missing, and
then you’re like, WHERE’S MY A1 AT, YO?! So, you know, try it.